Four Americans kidnapped at gunpoint during a trip to Mexico were in the country for a stomach operation, it has emerged.
Latavia 'Tay' McGee headed to Mexico on Wednesday for the tummy tuck, according to her friends and family, who confirmed she was joined with her cousin Shaeed Woodard, and friends Zindell Brown and Eric James Williams.
The friends wanted to split the driving responsibilities as they travelled from their homes in South Carolina to Mexico for Latavia's surgery.
The four were traveling Friday in a white minivan with North Carolina licence plates when they came under fire shortly after entering the city of Matamoros from Brownsville, at the southernmost tip of Texas near the Gulf coast, the FBI said in a statement Sunday.
"All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men," the FBI said.
The bureau is offering a $50,000 (£41,000) reward for the victims' return and the arrest of the kidnappers.
Zalandria Brown of Florence, South Carolina, said she has been in contact with the FBI and local officials after learning that her younger brother, Zindell Brown, is one of the four victims.
"This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from," she said in a phone interview.
"To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable."
Zalandria Brown said her brother, who lives in Myrtle Beach, and two friends had accompanied a third friend who was going to Mexico for a tummy tuck surgery.
A doctor who advertises such surgeries in Matamoros did not answer calls seeking comment.
Zalandria said the group was extremely close and they all made the trip in part to help split up the driving duties. They were aware of the dangers in Mexico, she added, and her brother had expressed some misgivings.
"Zindell kept saying, We shouldn't go down,"' Brown said.
A video posted to social media Friday showed men with assault rifles and tan body armour loading the four people into the bed of a white pickup in broad daylight.
One was alive and sitting up, but the others seemed either dead or wounded.
At least one person appeared to lift his head from the pavement before being dragged to the truck.
US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said in a statement Monday the Americans were kidnapped at gunpoint and an "innocent" Mexican citizen died in the attack.
He said various US justice agencies were working with their Mexican counterparts to recover the missing persons.
